The Fires of Autumn (15 page)

She slipped out of the apartment. She was old and heavy but she had a light step; Thérèse didn’t hear her leave or come back. Thérèse was alone when her grandmother returned with the capers.

‘But where’s Bernard?’ the elderly woman asked, sounding disappointed.

Thérèse was sitting at the table decorating her little black hat with some crepe. Her head and shoulders were very still and very straight: as a child, she often held herself in this way, rigid and silent, when she needed to cry but was holding back her tears; her hands seemed
to move independently, with a life of their own; they were agile and graceful, fluttering swiftly between the needles and the spools of thread; her hands unrolled the long crepe ribbon; they pushed the pins in deeper. Madame Pain saw that Thérèse’s lips were completely white; they formed a pale white line across her face.

‘You should have made him stay for supper,’ said Madame Pain, trying to sound indifferent.

Thérèse replied in the same way:

‘I thought about it, but he had plans …’

‘Really! There’s always time to have supper. Such a lovely bit of hake!’

‘He looked for you to say goodbye, Grandma.’

‘I went out to get some capers.’

‘He was very sorry. He’s leaving tomorrow,’ she added. ‘He’s going to America. His mother still doesn’t know.’

‘What is he going to do in America?’ asked Madame Pain.

She sat down and fanned herself with the
Petit Parisien
newspaper she had folded in half; she suddenly felt tired and out of breath: she had gone up and down the stairs for nothing. She had wanted to make such a nice supper for these children … Thérèse had let the man she was in love with go … The women of today only got what they deserved. They were too proud: ‘At Thérèse’s age, I would have thrown my arms around his neck, yes, I would,’ thought Madame Pain; ‘I would have made him wait a good long time for the rest, of course … But a nice kiss … He would have stayed. What am I going to do now with all these capers?’

‘Is he going away for a long time?’ she asked.

‘Two or three months.’

‘Well, then, he’ll be back, my dear,’ she said, looking fondly at Thérèse’s trembling hands. Thérèse did not cry; her voice was calm but she could not stop her fingers from shaking against her will; she picked up the scissors and cut diagonally across a piece of crepe; she put down the sewing.

‘I’m not doing anything right; I can’t see properly any more.’

She stood up to light the lamp.

‘He won’t come back often,’ she said after a moment of silence. ‘He leads a different life over there. What can you do?’ She made a vague gesture meant to indicate both America and the strange, exciting world where money was so easy to make, where everything was pleasurable, where women gave themselves to men they did not love.

She sat back down in silence and continued working on the little black hat; it was an old one; they had dyed the felt, for they had to be thrifty, had to count their pennies. Her widow’s pension and the Russian stocks were barely enough to keep her going when life was so expensive. Bernard no longer wanted anything to do with this ‘middle-class contentment’. Bernard was going to make his fortune in America. Détang had introduced him to politicians and financiers. ‘If you only knew what kind of crooked deals they make …’ said Bernard. He admitted it; he knew it was wrong; he was taking advantage of it; he was swimming in dangerous waters, just like the others. But he,
he
had been to war, yet he thought, and said, that he would have done better to speculate on American stocks. He had no respect for anything, not for women, not for love, not for the ideas for which they had fought.

She pushed the needle in, then pushed it in deeper, pulled it out, pushed it in again, concentrated on her sewing without raising her eyes.

When Bernard returned from the United States, he received nearly two hundred thousand francs in commission for having negotiated the purchase of heavy oil to be sent to the French protectorates of Cilicia and Syria. It was not only an excellent deal, but, from a patriotic point of view, it was impossible not to congratulate himself at the thought of the French armies in the Lebanon so well supplied.

‘I could have you decorated,’ Raymond Détang had said, ‘but you’re so young … Just be satisfied with having helped your country and having pocketed a nice little sum …’

Raymond Détang had earned five million francs out of the transaction.

It was an impressive feat; Bernard savoured an intoxicating feeling of pleasure. His childhood had been spent as a lower middle-class boy, holding him back in every possible way; his entire family stood between him and the rest of the world, forming insurmountable barriers; four years in hell and, finally, the golden years of 1920–1921, as spicy and full-bodied as ripe grapes. ‘Come and take whatever you want,’ said all the men and women. ‘Don’t even think about whether it’s good or bad. We are living in fortunate times, and there are no scruples. Take advantage of it.’

Two hundred thousand francs … He bought a car; he rented a bachelor flat. He knew very well that at the rate he was spending money, two hundred thousand francs would only last three to six months … But after that, he would surely have earned some more.

‘Actually, life has become much simpler,’ he said to Thérèse, whom he saw from time to time, when he went to visit his mother. He came over on New Year’s Day and, two months later, when he caught a bad cold, he spent a week at home so he could be looked after. It was rather nice to be in his folding bed again with his old, dog-eared copy of
The Three Musketeers
. Yes, life was much simpler. Before, he used to worry endlessly about everything: duty, honour, scruples, responsibilities, love affairs. Now, there was only one problem: how could he earn as much money as possible, and as quickly as possible? And since everyone else in the world was intent only on that one thing, too, he managed to obtain rather pleasing results. During the war it was the same, except then, people thought only about weapons, not much else entered their minds. Now, it was all about money … People made money out of everything, out of nothing. Recommendations, preferential treatment, favours, lunches with people from the Stock Market, finding an apartment to rent, a request sent out, a chateau, a painting, a car to sell …

‘It’s very strange,’ Madame Jacquelain confided to Thérèse. ‘It’s impossible to tell when he’s being serious.’

‘One day,’ said Bernard, ‘I’ll invite you over to my place … with Mama, of course, who can be your chaperone. You’ll see how nice a beautiful house can be, with good furniture and a servant.’

‘And yet, this is where you come when you’re ill …’

‘Naturally; when I have the flu and a head like this, I’m not myself. I get sentimental. Will you come and see me, Thérèse? I have African masks. I have a bathroom with green floor tiles.
I have a Chinese servant and a Siamese cat. Lots of toys, you see?’

She looked at him and thought: ‘I love him. I love him even as he is: happy, unfaithful, offhand, loved by other women, blessed with good luck. I would love him even if he were poor and unhappy. He is a good man, intelligent, but I don’t respect him the way I respected Martial. He has no conscience. He would make me suffer … if he wanted to. But I can’t help it. I love him.’

She didn’t dare believe he was really inviting her to spend an evening at his place, and yet he was offering just that. He wanted to please Madame Jacquelain and Thérèse’s presence would lighten the burden; he was happy to have them admire his beautiful apartment. In truth, Thérèse had a place in his thoughts, a very humble place, but she was dependable. ‘Thérèse is a good looking young woman, but she won’t hear of it … Too bad! Even so, she’s worth more than Renée. Oh, that Renée: to despise a woman, to see her exactly as she is, a heartless slut, and to still be drawn to her to the point of suffering, of feeling desperate, of being jealous … And her husband … All his financial deals … Ugh! Some day I’ll walk away from all that,’ thought Bernard as he went home one day at dawn. ‘It’s filthy, and ugly … Some day, I’ll marry Thérèse. But,’ he continued thinking with a sudden surge of sincerity, ‘once you’ve had a taste of all that: women like Renée, money like the two hundred thousand francs that falls into your hands just for having signed a bit of paper and taken a pleasure trip to New York or Washington – it’s impossible to disentangle yourself from all that afterwards. It’s a poisoned chalice. Bah! Best not to think about it. What difference does that make to how the world works? It will carry on in the same old way whether Bernard Jacquelain is rich or poor, a sucker or a sly devil. What does it matter?’

One evening in June, he invited his mother and Thérèse to his apartment. He felt such joy! It was a ridiculous sort of joy, he
told himself, for, in the end, where would it get him? She needed promises, words of love, love itself – why not? She was young. But what she needed most was to own the man she loved, the kind of possession that marriage alone provides. To live with him, sleep beside him, look after his meals, his health, his well-being, to ask every morning: ‘What are you going to do today?’, and question him every evening: ‘Who did you see today? What did you do? Tell me about it.’ Someone to give her children. Oh, yes, especially that; when she thought of the children she might have had, something deeply instinctive and gentle, but as yet untouched began to stir within her body and thrill her.

One day, he would come to understand that she could make him happy. But there was not much hope of that while he was living the life he now led.

‘What he loves,’ she thought, ‘is not Renée, it isn’t even money … It’s the luxury. You can fight a rival. But in this day and age, you can’t tear a man away from the seductive charms of a car, a bathroom with green floor tiles and a Siamese cat.’

She knew absolutely nothing about his business dealings, but she guessed they had to do with procuring what was superfluous rather than what was actually necessary, deals that fed on bluff, publicity and expenditure until they reached the point where they worked endlessly just to produce enough money to spend, and needed still more to make more. A vicious circle, the illusion of alchemy … Bernard said so himself, but it was this alone, this formula alone, that promised a life of luxury.

‘My God,’ thought Thérèse, ‘do you really need all that to be happy?’ She had entered the house where Bernard lived, arm in arm with Madame Jacquelain. Everything seemed immense to her, overwhelming. It was a large new building, near the Bois de Boulogne, quite close to where the Détangs lived, a fact Thérèse did not know. A Chinese man in a white jacket opened the door for them and said that his master had not yet
returned but that he had ordered dinner to be ready at eight o’clock.

‘He’ll be here soon,’ said Madame Jacquelain. ‘Thérèse, my darling, we can take advantage of it by having a look around his bachelor flat. A bachelor flat … what would my poor husband have said if he knew that Bernard had a bachelor flat? Do you remember his little metal folding bed in the dining room, behind the wood-burning stove, before he had his own room? This must be a change for him. Still, it’s admirable that he has come so far in so short a time. There’s the hallway. Here’s his little office. Do you want to see his bedroom?’

There was a large mirror in the bedroom in which Thérèse saw her reflection. She was wearing a black dress with a small collar and lawn cuffs. She thought she looked pretty. She had cut out the fabric and made the dress herself. ‘It’s just as good as the designs from the large fashion houses,’ she thought defiantly. ‘After all, those dresses aren’t made by the gods; they’re made by modest working women, humble little women like me.’ And every stitch contained so much love, so much desire to look attractive …

‘He will look at me,’ she mused, her heart beating with joy. ‘ “That dress looks good on you, Thérèse,” he’ll say. I don’t have any jewellery, but I have nice arms and a pretty neck. It’s true. I have to make sure he notices. The dinner … All three of them, relaxed together … Madame Jacquelain must be encouraged to have just a drop of champagne, I saw some champagne in the refrigerator (Madame Jacquelain had insisted she see the kitchen and pantry). As soon as she has any champagne, the old dear goes straight to sleep. I remember the day of Bernard’s First Communion; his mother fell asleep during the dessert.’

She pictured Madame Jacquelain dozing in her armchair. She and Bernard would hide out in his little office. It was the only
room that felt welcoming to her. On the divan, he would offer her a cigarette … If she saw he was affectionate and funny as he sometimes was, she would not be able to stand it any more, she would throw her arms around his neck. She would say: ‘Be mine forever … You need a woman who will pamper you, look after you when you’re ill, keep an eye on the cook, because you will dismiss that Chinese servant who looks like a thief … Be mine.’

She smiled, looked in the mirror and adjusted the brooch that held her collar in place; it was a little heart made of rubies surrounded by lots of tiny diamonds. A gift from her grandmother …‘I was thinking of leaving it to you,’ Madame Pain had said – she enjoyed what she called making ‘her little plans’, her down payments on the future; death seemed to be in her control this way, almost welcomed since it allowed her to offer little pleasures to the living. ‘Yes, I was thinking of holding on to it for a little while longer, but I’m giving it to you today so that it brings you good luck …’ These elderly women – Madame Pain, Madame Jacquelain – they knew everything. Madame Jacquelain would have preferred her son to marry an heiress, ‘but that doesn’t matter, that doesn’t frighten me,’ thought Thérèse.

‘It’s late,’ said Madame Jacquelain, also looking in the mirror, with satisfaction at her new dress; she had had it shortened slightly, meekly if belatedly following the indecent fashion of 1921 by allowing her black cotton stockings to show up to mid-calf. ‘The table is very tastefully set. This servant, the cook, his valet told me that Bernard invites people for dinner almost every night. The rascal … There are flowers strewn on the tablecloth; that’s very “high society”, don’t you think? Now I wonder what we’re going to have for dinner.’